Iced Over
by The Pegacorn
Summary: A girl named Holly discovers that she somehow still believed in Jack Frost all this time. She debates whether or not to leave everything she has for a better life, but could she truly commit to becoming 'iced over', or will something else get in her way to that path? Rated K plus just in case.
1. Chapter 1

**It has been quite a while since I've written a FanFic, so I decided on ROTG would be a good one to kick myself back into gear. Yes, a random OC girl was added, but she's not too generic... I think. Anyways, I'll try not to take too long to finish this one since it isn't going to be too long of a story. I thought I would just post chapter one up first just to see what people thought of it (: Enjoy!**

"Iced Over"

_Beep, beep, beep, beep… _

The alarm's wake up call was put to an abrupt end after a good smack to its snooze button by its unappreciative owner. The girl muttered a few insults towards the machine under her breath and rolled back over in her sheets. The cold atmosphere of her room was definitely unwelcoming and quite unpleasant to wake up to. Although it was still dark outside, it was after six o' clock on a frosty Tuesday morning.

_ Ugh, why can't school just end now? _the now irritated teen thought bitterly. _Or winter break come sooner…_

After the alarm began coaxing her awake again after a few minutes in the most annoying way, the girl swung her legs over the side of her little bed and switched the alarm off until the next night. She instantly regretted wearing shorts as pajama bottoms as sharp chills bit at her bare knees, calves, and feet. She hurried to get dressed and shuffle downstairs to grab breakfast.

"Morning, Holly," an equally tired voice greeted from the table.

"Hey Mom," Holly yawned and made her way towards the coffee pot.

"It's supposed to snow a few more inches this afternoon, you might get out of school early," the woman said before taking another sip from her steaming coffee mug.

"That's a relief," Holly murmured while opening the cabinet door above her. She carefully pulled down a soft blue mug and placed it next to the boiling coffee pot. She sighed and crossed the small kitchen to the pantry. The half awake girl grabbed a brightly colored box of cereal from one of the shelves and carried it over with her to the refrigerator. Holly looked for a second then reached to the back of the nearly empty appliance and pulled out a carton of milk.

She took her soon-to-be breakfast over to the table and set it down unceremoniously. After bringing a bowl and spoon over, filling it with cereal flakes and milk, and returning the items to their proper places, Holly returned to the coffee and filled her mug to the brim with the steaming brew.

As Holly was eating breakfast, she glanced casually at the clock on the wall opposite her. She nearly choked on the coffee she was drinking. She immediately gulped down the rest of her drink and shoveled some more of the cereal into her mouth before she tossed her dishes into the sink and raced to grab her coat and backpack.

"See ya, Mom!" she called as she stumbled to the front door and ran outside. Holly quickly wrapped the scarf that she'd grabbed around her neck and pulled her hat over her head. It was only snowing lightly and the sun had made its way into the morning sky, but the temperature was brutal. It was just below zero degrees with a slight breeze and Holly's fingers were already complaining about being uncovered.

Ugh, I forgot gloves again, she thought sourly. She stuffed her numbing hands into her coat pockets and walked quickly but carefully down her driveway. The bus was nowhere in sight. She had just missed it.

"That's just great," the girl muttered to herself with an agitated sigh. She stood at the end of the driveway for a few moments in the peaceful silence of the snowy neighborhood. There weren't any kids on Holly's street, just some older high school students and adults.

After about a minute, Holly decided that she'd better start walking down to the school. It was a little ways away, but not so far that she would have to get a ride. Her bicycle would definitely not be able to handle the slippery roads or sidewalks. Holly turned left out of the now snow coated driveway and walked down the sidewalk path.

As she was walking, she let her mind and thoughts flow freely about. She thought about last night's homework, some of the things that she'd eaten at dinner the past few nights, photography class; all sorts of random yet fairly mind entertaining thoughts. As she turned the second corner and made her way over the slushy cross walk, her mind wandered to Christmas thoughts.

"I wonder when all those kids stop believing in all of those characters," she murmured under her breath. The only response in the crisp, freezing air was the cloud of breath that escaped her lips. She wondered how kids could grasp all the stories of those mythical beings that show up around Christmas time.

The stories about Santa Claus were endless and filled to the brim with details to answer all questions about him and his life. It seemed as if dozens of interviews, articles, and documentaries had been produced about him over the past couple of centuries. There was such a huge implement that this man who came at night and gifted presents to good children was real that it was hard to say that he wasn't. He was so developed by everyone that he could very well be a living, breathing person inhabiting the swirling blizzards of the North Pole.

"I could never live there," Holly said, picturing the snow there and how the winter lasts really all year.

As she was letting thoughts of Santa course through her head, she began to think of other winter-dwelling characters. The elves that worked for Santa Claus, the flying reindeer, snowmen that sometimes came to life with the right amount of belief, but there was one figure that she knew she used to believe in a few years back. Holly thought hard about which one she had missed as she turned another street corner and made her way down the long sidewalk.

I know that he brings snow and wind and things like that, I just can't come up with his name right now… she thought inside her head. She tried her hardest to think of common boys names, but she couldn't pinpoint it.

Ben, George, Bob, John… she guessed. She must have guessed a bucket load of names before she smiled and said out loud, "Jack! Jack Frost, that's who it is."

Her sudden outburst echoed slightly down the walkway in the quiet, snowy scene. She was almost to the school since she was nearly out of the neighborhood. She was relieved that she hadn't taken nearly as long as she'd thought she would walking to school and that she hadn't truly forgot that what the character's name was. Holly didn't like to forget things and would spend as much time as she needed to remember what she forgot. Especially when she was still slightly interested in the thing that she forgot.

"Jack Frost…" Holly thought outwardly. "What an odd character; he brings snow and ice and wind, but then nobody ever really brings him up. They only really care about Santa Claus as if he did all of those things."

"Excuse me, what did you say?"

Holly let out a stifled scream of shock as she through her hands up to cover her mouth. She stopped dead in her tracks and, to add to her mini heart attack, slipped on the patch of ice where she stopped and smashed down on the sidewalk. She winced at the hard fall and heaved through her mouth.

Holly dared to look up and gaped at the tall figure who had seemed to have materialized out of thin air. They stared at one another for several long moments in the once again silent neighborhood. The school was just two blocks away now.

The figure, Holly realized, was doing the best he could to contain his amusement. He bit his lip and took a few shaky breaths before he had managed to fight off the laughter he wanted to release.

"Oh, here; sorry 'bout that," he said once he had his muse under control. He stretched out a slender arm and offered Holly his hand. She hesitated slightly before she took a firm hold on his palm and pulled herself back up.

"Thanks," she huffed, still staring wide-eyed at the stranger.

Holly studied him briefly; he seemed like a normal teenage boy, but there was definitely something strange about him. He sported a blue hooded sweatshirt that was laced with frost and tight tan pants. He wore no shoes and completely ignored the fact that it was barely above zero degrees outside. The weirdest thing about the boy was his vibrant white hair and the long, wooden staff he leaned casually on.

He stared back at Holly with almost the same awe; it was very rare that he found a human being who could look at him back and know he was there. It was extremely odd that a human this age would be able to see him. Most all of the children grew out of believing in beings like himself, really all of them before they were a young adult.

"You really scared me there," Holly said with a little grin as she thought of how she must have looked. "You're good at sneaking up on people."

"I wasn't trying, but I am one for pranks," he replied and started to chuckle.

"Well, glad you had your laugh then," the girl said.

"Thank you for following through on my trick," he said simply with a smile. "It's not often someone hears my plan."

"Oh. I'm Holly, by the way, and you are…?" she inquired even though she had the craziest idea of who she had just run into. Her head was spinning and she was pinching her fingers to wake herself up from this berserk dream when the boy confirmed her guess of his identity.

"Jack, Jack Frost."


	2. Chapter 2

**Sorry it's been a little while since my last update on this story. Hopefully it'll continue nicely since I had a bit of writer's block recently and haven't been able to get any inspiration. **

* * *

Holly shook her head slightly, her little smile widening. _This is insane! I must be asleep or something, _she thought silently. She found herself still pinching her fingers and finally let go of them. It must be real since the tall boy was still standing in front of her and, no matter how many times she squeezed her eyes shut and reopened them, the icy town wouldn't disappear and become her bedroom.

"Do you have somewhere to be?" Jack prompted.

"Oh! Yes, yeah, I do! Oh my gosh, I'm going to be sooo late," she said. She had almost forgotten that she was walking to school and was at least a half hour late by now. Holly quickly started her speed walking up again and tried to go as fast as she could on the slippery sidewalk.

"Huh, is school as boring as everyone says it is?" the boy asked as he jogged a few steps to catch up with the girl.

"Well, some classes are, but not all of them," Holly answered after rushing across the cross walk and heading down the last walkway. Her breath came in visible clouds of steam from her now slightly open mouth. She was almost to the school and could only imagine what the office was going to say about her very late arrival.

"Ah, how long are you there?" he asked after a second.

"Only a few hours; I'm already kinda late…" she replied as she approached the cross walk to the school.

"Okay, want it to be shorter?"

Holly paused for a second and turned her head to face him. He had that grin on his smug face again; it could only mean that he was devising a plan.

"Um, and how could that happen?" she asked and crossed the road quickly.

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe with… a little blizzard? Don't the schools call early release when they hear about potentially dangerous roads?" he drawled. He seemed pretty fond of the idea already. Holly laughed a little and slowed her pace.

"So you mean that you could bring a snowstorm here? Just so school gets out early? That is so cool!" she said with a smile.

"Why wouldn't I?" Jack laughed and slid his free hand into his jacket's pocket. "You go into school and I'll call up some snow. Sound good?"

"This is the weirdest thing I have ever done; you go do that, mister Jack Frost," she replied and with a last smile at the boy she opened the main door to the high school and hurried inside.

After checking in with the office and receiving her tardy slip, Holly hurried down the hall with her imagination buzzing. She thought that the scornful look on her history teacher's face would deflate her mood when she opened the classroom door in the middle of his lecture, but it had no affect on her. Holly made her way quietly to her seat and set her books down on the smooth, wooden desk top. She took out one of her many decently sharpened pencils and flipped her notebook open to a clean page.

The girl tried her best to catch up on the lesson by copying the notes of the girl in front of her, but soon her mind wandered right back to her reason for being late. She allowed a little smile to crawl across her lips as she recalled her awkward meeting of the thought-to-be-fictional person earlier that morning.

_Hopefully he really is real and I'm not just being a lonely lunatic, _Holly thought silently. Since she rarely talked with her fellow students, so she often felt as if she created friends in her mind. She didn't like to think she was going mad and hated the thought of being called crazy by the other kids. She shuddered at the thought of being outcast and left to fend for herself in a cold, lonely place, such as the woods near her house or in a cave in some far away mountain.

Just as Holly was wrapping up her notes and getting ready to pack up and move to her next class, the intercom clicked on and the girl immediately lit up.

"Pardon the interruption, but due to an incoming snow storm, school has been cancelled for today and buses will be arriving shortly for those who need them. Thank you," the unimpressed-sounding lady informed. She clicked off the intercom as the students in the history class gathered their belongings and headed for their lockers.

Holly bit back her smile the best she could as she made her way down the hallway and retrieved her coat and backpack. She yanked her hat on over her semi brushed hair and followed the crowd of students to the exits.

Most of the students lived in the neighborhoods that were situated around the high school, so there were lots of people walking down the sidewalks with friends or crossing the street. Holly never walked with anyone since she didn't have and high schoolers in her neighborhood. She didn't mind walking alone, though, since she knew she probably wouldn't be alone today.

She was right. After she had taken a few turns and had separated from most of the kids, she felt a quick, chilling breath hit her neck.

"Hey!" she laughed and rubbed her freezing skin. Jack came around and walked next to her right shoulder and returned her laugh.

"Told you I could make your school day a little shorter," he said and rested his staff on his shoulder.

"That was seriously the coolest thing," Holly commented and returned her bare hands to her coat pockets.

"Why don't you walk with all the other kids?" the boy asked after a moment.

Holly paused before answering.

"Well, I'm the only teenager on my street, so none of them walk my way," she replied. "And they aren't really friends of mine, either."

"Ah," he said and crossed the street after the girl.

They walked in a good-natured silence for a while until Holly was a couple of houses from her destination. She sighed and watched the cloud of her breath in the chilly atmosphere. She stopped outside her driveway and turned to face the boy.

"Well, it was nice meeting you, again, Jack," she said and smiled.

"You too," he replied. "Will I see you around?"

"I'm not planning on leaving this town any time soon," she giggled and waved as they parted ways.

Jack stood on the sidewalk for a moment longer, then shot up into the sky like a rocket. Just like that the boy was gone. Holly grinned and unlocked her front door and headed inside.

Her mother wasn't home from work yet, but a little hand written note had been left on the table.

It read, "Holly, if school lets out early, I'll be home around 8 tonight. Make yourself dinner. - Mom".

Holly smiled and rounded the corner to the small hallway where her bedroom was placed. She walked in, turned on the lights, and flopped down on her mattress to blissfully go through the happenings of her day in silence.

((End of Chapter 2))


End file.
